Fastest Growing Ship Register Doubles Size in One Month

In just one month, the fastest expanding shipping registry in the world has seen its size increase twofold.

Last year, Gabon, a modestly sized nation along the Atlantic coastline of Central Africa, was identified as the shipping registry with the quickest growth rate. This trend has significantly accelerated in the early part of 2024, following the transfer of a large portion of the Sovcomflot fleet to Gabon's flag.

According to data from Clarksons Research, since Russia's comprehensive invasion of Ukraine two years ago, the Gabonese flag has witnessed an extraordinary growth of 675%, reaching 6.2 million gross tons (gt), making it the second-largest registry on the African continent, only trailing Liberia.

The substantial growth of Gabon's flag from January to February was largely due to the transition of approximately 50 tankers associated with Sovcomflot from the Liberian registry—a registry based in the United States and subjected to the scrutiny of the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control—to Gabon’s.

Gabon’s national flag features three horizontal stripes in green, yellow, and blue, with the blue stripe symbolizing the sea, or more specifically, the South Atlantic Ocean.

Included among the vessels registered under Gabon was the Pablo, an aframax tanker built in 1997 that suffered a catastrophic explosion in Malaysian territorial waters last May, resulting in the deaths of three crew members. The incident involving the uninsured vessel, which was notorious for transporting Iranian oil, became one of the most striking images of shipping in 2023, highlighting the dangers of the dark tanker fleet.

In response to the increasing need for registries for the shadow fleet, other flags have started to accommodate these vessels. The grey tanker fleet, which includes vessels transporting cargoes from Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, has expanded from approximately 400 to over 700 ships in the two years following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as per BRS analytics.

Late last year, the Eswatini Maritime Affairs and International Ship Registry was established as a private entity in Singapore to manage ship registrations for the landlocked southern African kingdom, formerly known as Swaziland.

The promoters behind the Eswatini flag have also ventured into Laos, another landlocked country, where they are exploring the possibility of setting up an additional shipping registry.

Similar to Eswatini, Laos is not a member of the International Maritime Organization. Other landlocked nations that have entered the maritime registry scene include Mongolia, Bolivia, and the establishment of the San Marino Ship Register in 2021.